1. Technical Field
This patent application relates to the triage of very large collections of digital media files.
2. Description of the Related Art
U.S. Pat. No. 8,233,708 assigned to Panasonic describes a video scene classifying device that arranges pictures based on a classification index which indicates a feature of the pictures. This patent describes how the recent expansion in the availability of video content has adversely affected the convenience of viewing, searching, and editing it. However this patent follows on to be primarily concerned with assigning “chapters” to a video. The user may then “skip view” chapters and determine “what kind of scene is coming after the skip”. There is no discussion of ranking different videos based on level of user prioritized interest.
U.S. Patent Publication 2013/0038737 describes using Video Content Analysis (VCA) to detect and identify points of interest in a video. This patent application does describe a semantics-based video analysis where a user may manually enter textual or verbal information to generate a description of a scene. The user may, for example, segment and label various objects in a frame such as a road or a fence. But there is no description or suggestion of prioritizing or ranking different videos.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,891,020 describes processing digital video content to categorize “potential shots” via scene detection. The video preprocessor may output preprocess information including scene detection, shot detection scene cuts, dissolves, fade-ins, fade-outs, flashes and so forth. The resulting shots/scenes can then be identified and then arranged in ascending or descending order based on duration. For example, the classification may include only those scenes that are either shorter or longer than a threshold. Statistical analysis can be performed on the scenes with selected durations. The preprocessor is thus used to eliminate possible subsequent processing errors, but is not used to triage a priority-ranked list of videos.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,907,185 describes a search result ranking algorithm that utilizes one or more ranking parameters. The ranking parameters may include previous user feedback associated with custom content that corresponds to a search index, annotations of custom content provided by the user, or usage patterns derived from previous user accesses or searches. Other techniques for extracting and indexing content include techniques for indexing XML data, images, and videos. But this document provides no description of how a combinatorial methodology may be used to rank video content.
U.S. Patent Publication 2013/0198174 assigned to Microsoft ranks search results based on user configured rules. For example, a user may wish to display certain search results at the top or bottom of a ranked list. The ranking may derive from user-specified fields in a search such as a title, body, keyword, and file extension. The user may also specify match values such as gender:male, keyword:BrandName, or other criteria based on textual content analysis (for example “URL starts with”, “results contain keyword”, “title contains keyword”, “title matches the phrase”, and so forth.) Although it is mentioned that the system “includes video”, there is no further description of the use of video other than to record still images or display video streams.
U.S. Pat. No. 9,143,742 describes a way to automatically analyze and rank media items or a plurality of intervals (e.g., a frame, or group of frames) of the media items, based on at least one criterion such as video quality video, audio quality, video characteristics (e.g., color, light, and/or motion), or audio characteristics (e.g., audio levels, noise, and/or pitch). However there is no discussion of combinatorial ranking based on user-prioritized interest or scene recognition.
U.S. Patent Publication 2016/0026707 describes clustering of search results based on similarity of multimedia content, determined based at least in part on a non-text-based analysis or representation of such content. For each of a plurality of search results, e.g., web pages, having associated multimedia content, a representation of the multimedia content is generated and the respective representations are used to determine a degree of similarity. The degree of similarity information is used to cluster search results, for example by presenting or otherwise associating together as a responsive cluster those pages that have been determined to the same and/or very similar multimedia content.
U.S. Pat. No. 9,235,625 describes determining a score for media content that depends on the number of annotations that identify the media source.